Flags and Letters

Still loving Netflix and all that it is providing, I have been festing, which has proven to be an unexpected feasting, perhaps because of all the hype that has surrounded the films I have most recently viewed.

Clint Eastwood has spent his professional career in Hollywood creating an iconic image that embodies the definition of tough, cool, and macho. He is all that seems to be Californian: rugged, independent, indifferent to the laws of man, more willing to shoot than to talk. Somehow I tend to link these characteristics with John Wayne and Ronald Reagan, neither of whom could actually act, except perhaps off-screen. Of course, they both have airports named after them now, and Reagan went on to become president of everything for which he ran, including the country.

Eastwood in his maturity has chosen to turn his lifetime of experiences and talents to filmmaking. I don't know why I can't remember that I like his work as a director, but there it is: every time I am faced with the prospect of watching one of his films, I find myself reluctant to begin, then completely seduced when I finally get around to doing so. The first time this happened to me was with Unforgiven, which I must have rewatched for a month while trying to wrap my thoughts around all the ideas packed into it. Such has been the case with my latest encounter with Eastwood-directed films, two this time: Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima.

These two films really should be seen together, or at least consecutively, and they should be viewed in the order listed above. One should not be seen without the other, though each stands well enough on its own. If Americans were willing to sit still long enough and, more importantly, theater managers willing to allocate such a lengthy time block for anything not sf- or fantasy-related, these films would have been one amazing epic. That said, there is great wisdom in having made them two separate films, if only because of the fact that doing so produces such an effective reflection of the sentiments of that era as well as the mood of present times, thus highlighting an essential part of the tangle of problems at the core of intercultural conflicts.

Flags features the American grunts who were singled out by a chance photo to serve as the unifying focus of fundraising in the U.S. during some of the darkest days of World War II. Eastwood's presentation of the events is such that one is invited to note not so much the conflict between nations as the conflicts of class and race, both within this country and within the military attempting to present a monolithic image to the world. The societal chasms depicted are not so much generational as experiential, falling between those who have seen action and those who have been in the heat of the action; between those who have been in a war zone and those who have only heard and/or read about it back home; between those running the war and those running in it or from it.

Ryan Phillippe, who caught my attention in Breach and Crash, is again featured, this time as the med tech who should be a noncombatant but must kill in order to attempt to heal, then must play the hero taking credit for the achievement of others.

Adam Beach, whom I first saw in the beloved Mystery, Alaska, turns in a great performance as the continually underappreciated and misunderstood Native American. His narrative stream may be dismissed by some as maudlin or overly dramatic, but that just goes along with the whole idea of the plight he represents as being too easily overlooked and dismissed.

There are a number of other familiar faces. T2's Robert Patrick flits by, as do other action film fellows seen a hundred times before. They are Eastwood film types, filling out military roles with aplomb.

This movie, however, spends as much time on the civilian side as on Iwo Jima, to its benefit. This is a war movie that takes us home, where so many of the fellows will never go again.
What I particularly like is the way it puts me in mind of the works of Kurt Vonnegut, whose wartime tales tended to leave his protagonist loose in time, flashing forwards and backwards between memories and distortions of reality in present time with less attention to chronological sequencing than to thematic connections. The resulting film blew me away.

Likewise, Letters moves between memories and present realities, more for the purposes of characterization than narration. The framework of the film is an archeological discovery, and Eastwood very kindly remembers to complete the connection at film's end, (unlike some other, less adept tale tellers who shall remain nameless here).

Letters is filmed almost entirely in Japanese, featuring English only in three brief encounters near the end when American soldiers are encountered, and in one brief early flashback. Again, the focus is more on the differences between leaders and followers, between traditionalists and modernists, between those who have had experiences in battle and those for whom battle, let alone war, is a relatively foreign experience. What one has had and values vs. what one has to lose is key to differences in attitudes.

Ultimately, the most sympathetic character proves to be a simple grunt who, like "Doc" in Flags is more of a noncombatant than an actual "soldier", and whose attitudes and actions serve as the most pervasive (if not the only) cultural bridge for viewers. As "Doc" waged war primarily with his med kit, so Saigo waged war primarily with his shovel. This baker turned ditch digger is the vehicle through which Western eyes are invited to appreciate and understand that the "enemy" were not so different from us. His enemies are not the foreign invaders but rather the abusive and vindictive superior who is always using him as a scapegoat and all-purpose whipping boy. All Saigo wants is to stay alive and return home to his loving wife and the daughter he has never seen. Though Western viewers may tune in to see the unarguably gorgeous Watanabe Ken-san, one cannot help but come away agreeing that "I like Saigo."

A friend noted that there is greater pathos with the losing side; whatever the reason, Letters is the superior film. Though both films depict the perversion of patriotism as an ideal, each also shows very personal pictures of the men in the trenches. There is great nobility and tragic loss depicted here, both high and low. These are companion films that each new generation really needs to see.